Virtual Keyboard Creates Constant Ties to the Internet

Cell phones and PDAs have begun to blur the lines between our work lives and personal lives, but they still don’t provide the full functionality of a desktop PC. (Building a complex spreadsheet or presentation on a PDA can still be a daunting task.)

A new generation of virtual devices has the potential to put a full-size keyboard, mouse and monitor into the user’s pocket. The Virtual Keyboard (with virtual mouse) from Virtual Devices projects the image of a keyboard onto any flat surface. A small camera in the system records the user’s keystrokes. The keyboard is currently available for PCs and will soon be available for PDAs and cell phones.

Even more compact is NEC’s P-ISM, which includes a pen-style cellular phone with handwriting input, a virtual keyboard, a small projector that displays the computer monitor, and other functions.

Although P-ISM won’t be ready for some time, NEC’s promotional material presents the product as the “the ultimate ubiquitous computing.”

What does that mean when we can’t escape the PC? Will we still talk about whether we can tele-commute when we’re always tele-commuting?

From a marketing perspective, more online time means more opportunities to reach consumers. But it also means risking “information overload” that might be counter-productive in the long run. More intelligent, relevant online messages will be required to ensure that more connected users don’t start tuning out.